January Favourites

 not many - it's been a busy month!

The second picture was for a sgraffito challenge. I had painted some excess gold acrylic onto heavy card, so for the challenge I decided to overpaint it with a dark blue, and I swirled C's comb through it. 

A couple of nice walks - we went to Bull Island one Saturday morning because the new mudguards for my bicycle had arrived, and the shop was not far from one of the access roads to the island.  We were lucky because it was a sunny and dry day without too much wind, and with the tide on the turn coming in, we got to see a good few birds. I'll add a few photos here but there's an album which you can see by clicking HERE. The following weekend I was down with my sister for her birthday, and we went to a reserve near her. Not nearly as lucky with the weather, but I was glad I'd brought my long zoom lens because we still got to see plenty of birds - more curlew, shelduck, a few wigeon and a lot of teal. The first three photos are from Bull Island, the next ones are from Harper's Island. And the last one was taken on the way to work on Thursday - two days after the worst of the flooding. On Tuesday most of the cycle path was under water. 

This month's header is a photo from a walk along the Lee in Cork last February - a curlew and some oystercatchers in flight. 

August Favourites

 ...slim pickings. AShackleton Gardens nd one was technically July, but I didn't share it here because I wanted it to be a surprise when I mailed it. 

 

I'll add a few photos from a rare evening walk in the park - a lovely sunny evening which we felt was too good not to take advantage of.

When we started, the area to the right of the gate we go in was all raked grass, and by the time we returned to the car they had almost finished baling it. 

I also persuaded C onto his bicycle for a quick trip to the Shackleton Gardens one Sunday when we were unexpectedly free. I'll add a link for anyone with the time and inclination to look at the photos - there are 72, so it's not for the faint-hearted: Shackleton Gardens Shackleton Gardens 

September 24 included our trip to Donegal, so no shortage of photos to choose from for a blog header, 

May Favourites

 Not many!

It was a busy month - a few extra days in work, and a friend staying so we went on a few outings. So I'm afraid I still haven't had time to do anything with photos from Paris. There's a culled but unedited album here - https://photos.app.goo.gl/4brZEY1At6UgA7yWA  

We had pretty much two full weeks of sunshine and bright sunny days - making it hard for our friend, who left Ireland 25 years ago, to remember what Irish weather can really be like, and also making it harder to spend time on photos - too warm and too bright. Normal weather has now resumed...

One of the things I did with Rod on a day that C was working was book a visit to Farmleigh House, something I'd always meant to get round to, and this was the perfect motivation. I must have picked something up when we were out shopping in the morning because when I went to get the bicycles out, mine had a totally flat tire. Luckily there was just time to replace the tube and still get there in time for the tour that we had booked. 

I'll add a couple of photos of the house, since there are plenty of the garden on the blog already.

The painted ceiling, if it's possible to click in and view it larger, has swallows flying around. It was painted when the Guinness of the time was confined to bed and unable to get out and about, so it brought the outdoors in. 

Example of book-binding

The blog header this month is a photo from last June, taken on the beach at St Georges de Didonne - one of the many sunsets we sat and watched. 

Botanics, the floral side

 

C likes the traditional bright yellow eschscholzia. I quite liked these pale yellow ones, and it was odd that only a handful were dotted so copiously with small flies.

We were lucky to be at the right time to see the handkerchief tree in full bloom.

This was a tall palm-like "tree" in the temeperate zone glass house, with leaves something like banana tree and a bloom amazing like Bird of Paradise, only much larger and less colourful. 

Along the coast

 I recently had to go for my annual medical check-up for work, and this time I made an afternoon appointment for after work. Knowing that I would have a little spare time I tucked my camera into my bag, and took a few photos on the way.

First up was the changed decor on this utility box - last year it displayed a Viking cycling along, a sheep looking through a porthole and the Pigeon Chimneys (as blogged here). This year it was totally different.

Shortly after that, you reach yacht club land, so I spotted this sign.

After that I reached Bull Island, a bird reserve and two golf links.  I cycled out to it along the second causeway, so between the two I spotted a couple of egrets and some shelduck.

As it was fairly overcast I didn't great photos on the reserve, but here are a couple. It was certainly lovely to feel sand beneath my feet and smell the tang of salt air. 

On the way back I spotted some more utility box art. I'm afraid the close-up didn't turn out well, and I can't remember if at that stage I was just using my phone because I needed to get home and get dinner cooked before going out again...I'm thinking it was just my phone at this stage. In any case, I also took a long shot to depict the setting, because just beyond the road is St. Anne's Park, and in fact there was a heron in the little pond/lake.

Since Saturday was a beautiful sunny morning with blue skies, and we were both awake early, we took a trip to the Botanic Gardens and I'll be along shortly with a recap of that. We were delighted to see a mandarin duck (they've been gone from the park for several years now) and a little grebe, plus a swan family with very young cygnets.